Yu Xiang didn’t know what he’d expected would happen once he fed the gray fire of his will to the refined image of his body.

The perfected replica lighting up like a bonfire was an entirely mundane outcome, that none the less the young reincarnator hadn’t expected in the slightest.

A flash of panic passed through his mind before it was quickly replaced by a crashing wave of relief.

Despite its appearance, the steely fire was not actually burning his refined image. There was no excruciating pain going through Yu Xiang’s spiritual pathways as the flame licked at his soul, which meant that he was in no danger of losing the years and years of work he’d put into his cultivation.

Emboldened by relief, he metaphorically stepped forward closer to his burning image, something in his gut and his continued presence in this empty space telling him that there was still more to be done, and after a few moments of observation with both his sight and spiritual senses he was fairly sure he knew what he needed to do next.

While his manifested Intent was clinging to his perfected body it was only passively helping the refinement along, giving him only marginal improvements to the overall process, but he wanted was far more.

He had erred by simply giving his Intent up to what he saw as an automatic process, in his eyes giving it a far superior fuel to simple spiritual energy. But Intent was far more than a mere source of energy, it was the culmination of one’s willpower refined by a cultivator’s soul into a peerless power.

Something capable of reshaping the very fabric of reality if directed properly.

And there laid the crux of the problem, for Yu Xiang had not given his Intent any direction, but fortunately that was an easily rectified mistake.

With an effort of will, the young reincarnator reached out to his merrily burning body, taking hold of the gray flame of his will once, and imparted upon it a simple task.

Temper my body, burn away all of its impurities and obstructions.

The living fire eagerly heeded its master’s wish, intensifying manyfold and starting to burrow into the ethereal replica of his body.

Immediately, Yu Xiang knew he’d been on the right track as he could feel his consciousness slowly reach out to the material world. All of his physical senses crashed back into his awareness, leaving him suspended in a moment of chaotic sensory feedback that could’ve lasted for seconds or hours from his perspective.

In a blink, he was back where he’d started meditating, sitting on an artificial stone outcropping on top of a gigantic rock formation, the nightly breeze caressing his uncomfortably hot body in a soothing embrace.

He’d been alone with Chun Dai when he’d started but it seemed that his timely breakthrough had attracted the attention of his other companions.

His fellow inner disciples were looking at him from the mouth of their cave abode, their gaze filled with confusion apart from three of them. Huang Lei, ever the noble lady, was covering the lower part of her face with her battle fan, giving him a knowing look, Lin Fen’s face was stuck in a pensive frown, ruminating over some newborn idea, and Su Rong was giving him a dark look, suspicion painted all over his visage.

“What was that?” Asked Su Mei, her voice containing the barest undertones of awe.

Yu Xiang blinked. “What was what?” He asked, rising one of his eyebrows.

Zhen Yin stepped forward next, the wild haired woman checking him out from top to bottom. “You just…” She began, waving her hands together as if simulating an explosion. “You just burst on fire during your breakthrough!”

Oh. Oh. Well, how exactly was he going to explain that one without revealing possibly harmful information to some poor impressionable young cultivators?

His eyes flicked towards the lone core disciple, who had already anticipated him, stepping forward from his place leaning beside the cave’s entrance.

“That’s not for you to know.” His words were harsh, but effective. The crowd of inner disciples flinched in surprise but quickly quieted down after the older cultivator weighed in on the subject.

Yu Xiang could do nothing but smile awkwardly and shrug his shoulder in helplessness.

This of course wasn’t good enough for Su Rong, who promptly changed his dark gaze into a fiery glare, before with a growl he returned to the inner parts of the cavern, bringing the vivid image of a bear angrily returning to its den after a fruitless hunting trip.

Oh, well. Two steps forward, one step backward with him. And he’d even begun to let down his guard…

As the green eyed cultivator lamented all the extra work he’d have to do to pacify the fiery cultivator, Lin Fen stepped forward then crouched at his side, taking out a crystal vial and his long silver dagger from the folds of his robes.

With surgical precision, he started to scrape off the young reincarnator’s shed impurities from the ground, making sure not to take any loose stones with it as he deposited them in the clear container.

Every single person present looked at the feline cultivator in weirded out puzzlement, even the normally stoic swordsman’s expression slackened for a moment.

“Brother Fen?” Feng Liu asked hesitantly. “What… what exactly is it that you are doing?”

Lin Fen didn’t bother to turn around, answering the question in an almost bored tone. “I’m collecting some samples. I am curious to see if this concentrated substance has some kind of useful alchemical properties.”

“Ah, I see.” The ever polite young man simply nodded. “Carry on then.”

Yu Xiang snorted. Suddenly feeling very grateful that his new body refinement method had ended up burning away all of the impurities on his skin. The young reincarnator didn’t fancy his chances of getting a proper bath in the middle of a spiritual beasts infested forest.

Soon after that, the inner disciples all retreated back into the cave to sleep, mindful that the coming day might just be the last ones of their mission.

After a full night of rest, the young cultivators were all ready to tackle the coming adversities, but before they could leave their mountaintop Chun Dai summoned them all before him.

“From what we have observed of the spiders infesting this forest, its safe to assume that their numbers will keep rising the further we reach for the center of this hidden space.” His voice echoed from the peak, but thankfully not enough to alert any spiritual beast below them. His icy eyes scanned their expectant faces, sharp as a blade and just as cold. “So before we venture even futher I will teach you all how to hide your presences better.”

Yu Xiang wasn’t sure if the older cultivator was being genuine with them or if he was trying to soothe their wounded egos from his harsh words of the day before, as his unchanging tone and expression made it quite hard to get a read on him, but he guessed it didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

It didn’t take them long to learn how to mask their presence, as it wasn’t a terribly difficult skill to pick up. A cultivator had to simply wrap their aura all around their body, gather the ambient spiritual energy around them like a cloak, then keep their internal flow of energy as slow as possible.

This obviously made it extremely difficult if not outright impossible to use any technique while hiding themselves but the young reincarnator guessed that avoiding having to use them in the first place was kind of the point.

Once they’d all gotten a hold of the skill’s workings they swiftly left their second resting place, eager to finally reach the heart of the forest.

Their speed was even further restricted by the use of their new hiding technique, or at least most of them were. Huang Lei had probably already known this method far before Chun Dai had talked to them about it, and her higher mastery of it obviously made her a lot freer in her ability to use her internal energy to boost her movements.

Meanwhile, Yu Xiang himself was feeling like a god among men, his body was as light as air, his movements as quick as lightning, and his muscles hid so much power inside them that the green eyed cultivator was almost afraid of cracking the earth and snapping the thick branches of the trees they sometimes walked on with every one of his steps.

He felt like he could grab the world by its sides and lift it over his head. This refinement induced euphoria had only hit him now as he could fully unleash his new strength. The difference done by his last round of refinement was simply astonishing, and even though it wasn’t on par with the first one, as before that he was only a bit stronger than the peak of mortal strength, the fact that the two could be even compared in scale was baffling.

Yu didn’t know how much of this was just the natural progression of the Constitutional Realm and how much was because of his use of Intent to refine his physique, but he none the less thanked his always stoic senior in his mind.

After half a day more of running around evading arachnid patrols the group of Golden Peak disciples finally reached the innermost layer of the hidden space.

How did they know? Simple. All the patrolling spiritual beasts had disappeared.

“We’re getting close to their nest.” Commented Huang Lei, letting go of her aura cloak. The other inner disciples hesitated for a moment before they followed their lead, their speed rising immediately as they could finally actively boost their bodies with their inner energy.

“How do you know?” Asked Su Mei curiously. “Shouldn’t there be even more bugs keeping a lookout around the nest?”

The noble lady shook her head. “Spiritual beasts don’t develope human like inteligence until the Worldy Realm, and whatever is directing all of these weird beasts isn’t inteligent enough to predict our ability to hide from its minions.” She then briefly looked back from where they’d come. “I am quite sure that without it we wouldn’t have been able to slip by all of those horrible creatures.”

Trusting the young woman’s superior experience, they all followed her lead forward, the blood in their veins starting to pump faster as they got nearer and nearer to the core.

“Look!” Lin Fen shouted, startling all of his companions and immediately sending them into fight or flight mode. But as hard as they tried to they couldn’t sense anything moving around them, which then prompted them to look towards the feline alchemist, who was currently crouching on a tall tree’s branch, his hands hovering over something hanging from a higher branch.

“It’s a spiritual fruit…” He whispered in awe.

At his words, all the inner disciples couldn’t help but grow excited as well, but were immediately disappointed by what they saw.

It looked similar to an apple to Yu’s eyes, the problem was that it was small and green, clearly unripe.

A collective despondent sigh escaped from all of their lips, but Lin Fen didn’t seem to care, lost as he was in his own little world.

After that, they encountered no more interruptions, and after scaling one of the massive stone formations that had stood in their path they were finally able to lay their eyes up the heart of this entire world.

A gigantic tree, almost as tall as the mountain like rocky teeth erupting from the ground and which they were currently walking on, stood at the exact center of a large clearing.

The sight was enough to almost make them sink to their knees in relief. They had finally reached their destination.